Watch the happy, healthy people on the screen and listen to the machine-gun delivery of warnings and disclaimers; if you can hear them over the music.
Or maybe just read the warnings and disclaimers in the teentsy-weentsy type at the bottom of the screen; if you can speed-read in the two or three seconds before it all disappears.
My, oh my!
Know what?
I've begun to think we're back a couple of hundred years; the old West; that wonderfully colorful time of snake-oil salesmen; smooth-talking guys; hucksters; sell anything to anyone; who'd travel all over the country in their horse-drawn wagons entertaining people in towns they'd pass through and selling miraculous! amazing! unbelievable! cures for just about anything.
Guaranteed!
Those were the days, of course, before scientific studies; cause and effect; laboratories; drug testing; consequences; what was real; scientifically evaluated; what wasn't.
Followed gradually by rules and regulations. Parameters. Proof of effectiveness. Claims that could be made. Those that couldn't be made.
Followed by penalties. Fines. More and more studies.
Finally, to where we are now; so much known. Still more to be learned; all examined; detailed; exactly what worked and how well it worked. Tests.
Regulations that are comprehensive; thorough.
Print advertising—newspapers; magazines; billboards—requires details of product performance; the kind our pharmacist includes with prescription drugs we're using.
We can see it; we can read it. Dosage; reactions; exactly what we should and shouldn't do.
TV? A whole 'nother story.
Commercials that are engaging; designed to sell; and do they ever.
Enforcement? Parameters that share print advertising demands? Accuracy? Details?
I mean; who's watching or hearing them?
It's entertainment, folks.
Return of the scalawags; traveling around in their covered wagons; putting on a show; no more wagons; now we have TV. I have to say, though; some of the commercials are a lot more fun to watch than the TV programs that surround them.
Details? Nah. Who needs details?
I just sit back and enjoy the show.
TV's where it's at, folks.